A diet high in junk food and sugar can be destructive to your cardiovascular health. You may have heard about how cholesterol can accumulate in your arteries and put unnecessary strain on your heart. (updated Oct 12 2024)
Most people rely on blood thinners and other medications (statins) to combat the effects of high cholesterol, but the condition can easily be managed by food alone.
High cholesterol levels can lead to a buildup of plaque in the artery walls, narrowing the arteries, and causing a condition called atherosclerosis. this impairs blood flow throughout the body and increases risk of heart disease and stroke (1).
What Is Cholesterol?
There exist two main types of cholesterol (2):
Low-density lipoprotein (LDL): small dense LDL transports cholesterol particles throughout your body, and can be easily oxidized, building up in the walls of your arteries, and making them hard and narrow.
High-density lipoprotein (HDL): picks up excess cholesterol and takes it back to your liver to be cleared away through bile.
High levels of small dense LDL cholesterol is typically caused by smoking, poor diet, inactivity, diabetes and is linked to obesity. To put it simply, high cholesterol, in most cases, is simply a reflection of an unhealthy lifestyle.
Specifically, high cholesterol refers to high levels of “oxidized cholesterol”.
When cholesterol is oxidized, it leads to a build-up of plaque in the artery walls, which hardens and narrows the arteries, and causes a condition called atherosclerosis. Plaque is made up of cholesterol, fat, calcium, cellular waste products and fibrin, that lodge inside our arterial walls and damage the cells that are already there, causing inflammation.
We now know that LDL cholesterol poses a health risk only if it is oxidized.
Oxidized cholesterol and oxidized fat are the real enemies. Our bodies treat these as foreign substances and stimulate inflammatory cytokines to damage and kill them with inflammation.
The fact that LDL cholesterol is highly prone to oxidation explains why a rise in LDL cholesterol normally brings about an increase in coronary artery disease risk.
The oxidized cholesterol that clogs our arteries and causes coronary artery disease stems from two sources:
One. We acquire some of them straight from our diets when we eat oxidized fats and oils.
Two. Our bodies produce the remainder internally.
Dietary oils and fats tend to become oxidized when they are heated, dried, aged, exposed to light, and otherwise chemically processed. A diet high in vegetable oils is unmistakably hazardous.
A lesser-known fact is that sugar oxidizes as well as oils and fats do. Glucose, and especially fructose, produce many oxidation products when they are aged, heated, or otherwise processed.
Studies have shown that people who are at serious risk of heart attacks to the extent that they need bypass surgery have high oxidized LDL cholesterol, not normal LDL cholesterol.
Luckily, it’s possible to get antioxidants from foods to neutralize free radicals and reverse the damage they